Naked Tchopstix - Revisit

Recently we went back to Naked Tchopstix with a bunch of friends.  We were upstairs in a party room (in Broad Ripple) that I didn’t even know they had. It was a strangely seemingly slightly unfinished-looking room (someone described it as “early frat house”), but we didn’t care because we were all chatting and celebrating a friend’s birthday.

We were all kind of ordering appetizers to share and I had some crab Rangoon ($5.99) as well as the tuna tataki ($10.99). I have to say, it was possibly my least favorite crab Rangoon I have had. They were big triangles that were stuffed with the slightly crabby cream cheese mixture and deep-fried. There was just a little too much of the filling for me, making it taste more like cream cheese than anything, and the crust of the fried pocket wasn’t very crisp because of it.  I definitely liked the tuna better—it was just lightly seared on the outside and laid atop shredded lettuce and some shredded radish. It was drizzled with a ponzu dressing. The tuna was good quality and wasn’t overwhelmed by the sauce. The lettuce was apparently meant as more of a garnish as far as I could tell though, because it was completely unseasoned.

We had several rolls as well. We ordered the corona roll ($10.99), which was one that had been our favorite in a past visit (always good to get one that you know you’ll like). It’s filled with avocado, spicy tuna and tempura bits and topped with thin white tuna, lime and wasabi mayo. Their spicy tuna isn’t the best I’ve had, but this roll is a nice combo of things that I like (the fish as well as the crunch and acid) and I would certainly get it again.  We also had a straightforward salmon avocado roll (with some tempura flakes added). It was also tasty. The salmon was fresh and I liked the little added crunch. Both of these rolls fulfilled my sushi craving for sure and I was happy with both.

We also ordered the playboy roll ($14.99) because so many people had recommended it.  It had tempura shrimp, asparagus, spicy tuna and tempura chips inside and shrimp and sweet and spicy sauce outside, which in theory are all things I like. The big sell on this roll is that it comes in foil and set on fire. Here’s the thing, for me this should be called the “lighter fluid roll” because that is all I could taste. Whatever flavor nuances there might have been in the actual sushi roll were lost. Hubby and I each had like one or two pieces and left it. I have realized, I don’t like my sushi deep-fried and I don’t like it on fire.  Both treatments just kill any other flavor, at least for me. 

I think you can get a pretty good meal of straightforward sushi here if you want to—but it seems like a lot of people like the whole lit on fire thing because these things were going off all over the restaurant. I don’t know, I wasn’t a fan.  In my opinion, there are also quite a few places where you can get better straightforward sushi than this. I think if I were to go back, I might try some of the other types of food offered and see what it’s all about. The place does a very good business though regardless of what I think—the place was jammed. Our servers were very friendly, even if the orders got kind of confusing with so many people ordering so many different things. They did a pretty good job of staying on top of it, as well as getting us drinks.

Can’t really figure this place out…it’s always busy, but I’ve never had anything really exceptional…unless I am just missing something

Naked Tchopstix

6253 N. College Ave.

Indy 46220

317/252-5555

www.tchopstix.com

Naked Tchopstix

I don’t know if it was because it had been so hot or what, but lately I am craving sushi.  And we needed somewhere that had a wide enough menu to make the kids happy too (meaning, they have not developed their true love of sushi.  Yet.)  A friend of mine really likes Naked Tchopstix so we thought we would give it a try.  

They certainly meet the criteria of a large menu—our server came back like 4 times before we were ready to order—and even then I didn’t feel like I had enough time to really read through everything.  They have a lot of sushi and Japanese food, but they also have a lot of other things—Korean, Thai, Chinese etc.  Everything from soups to noodles to rice dishes. 

We settled on trying their tuna tartare ($9.99) because in many places it is one of my favorite things, so I always want to try it somewhere else.  This one was different from most in that it was more like the tuna mix that is used in rolls that list “spicy tuna” as an ingredient.  It is more of a finely chopped mix of the tuna mixed with spicy mayo—it isn’t the large raw pieces of Ahi that are my favorite thing.  So it was this “spicy tuna” mix combined with mango and tobiko (fish eggs) with deep fried wontons on the side to eat them with.  There seemed to be a sweet sauce on top as well. This one wasn’t for me—I guess I like either a soy based sauce or an acid based sauce with something like this.  And something about just scooping up the prepared tuna made me think of canned tuna fish.  I don’t mind it inside a roll as much along with other ingredients, but just eating it straight up like this seemed strange. Hubby liked it better than I did.

We also got two rolls. Again, we were having a hard time deciding because there are a lot of choices.  I like there to be some contrasting flavors in a roll—something with some crunch or texture as well as something creamy (either the fish or the sauce). I am also always partial to a roll that includes avocado.  The first one that grabbed my eye was the corona roll ($10.99). It included avocado, more of the spicy tuna (I didn’t realize they were going to have the same ingredients), and tempura chips and was topped with white tuna and lime.  It had a light wasabi mayo sauce as well.  I really liked this.  It had a nice citrusy flavor and wasn’t overly sweet.  I personally like a crunch from something tempura in my roll and the little chips did the trick.  The white tuna was pretty tender.  I like the flavor from the lime on top, but ended up picking most of them off because I just don’t like chewing on the skin of the lime slice, even when it is really thinly sliced.  This roll was the best thing we had.

The other roll was the Tokyo roll ($12.99) which had eel, avocado and crab inside and tuna and spicy mayo on the outside as well as various flavors of roe. It normally comes with cucumber inside as well, but cucumber isn’t our favorite thing in sushi, so we had them leave it out.  That is probably not a good idea because it probably gives it the extra crunch that the roll needed.  It was good, but nothing that I would crave again.  The ingredients were good, and the tuna on the outside was nice and fresh, but it just didn’t wow me for anything.  The corona roll was much more memorable.

We also shared a small order of frites ($4.99) with the kids, which seemed like a weird thing to get at a place like this, but they wanted them, so we tried them.  They are pretty good—the really thin kind that were nice and hot and crispy.  They served them with 4 different sauces—all things that I think they are using in their other food items—a teriyaki type sauce, a sweet chili oil, a spicy mayo and a wasabi mayo.  Honestly, none of the sauces were really necessary—the frites were fine on their own.  I am guessing these are on the menu for the late night Broad Ripple bar scene.  But the kids liked them.  The kids split a chicken teriyaki dinner ($11.99) which they were fine with but my daughter informed me the all white meat was “a little dry.” I had one quick bite and would say she was right about that.

All in all, I would say this is a good place to go to meet a sushi craving, even though there are other places that I like better.  They do have a nice wide-ranging menu though to appeal to many different tastes.  So what have other people had non-sushi wise that they really like? Or do you have a favorite roll there?

Naked Tchopstix

6253 N. College Ave.

Indy 46220

317/252-5555

www.tchopstix.com (why do restaurants not put prices on their websites?)